Corset Couture Paper Dolls

Corsets became essential to stylish attire more than 500 years ago, and their influence lingers to this day. These three dolls—two ladies and a gentleman "dandy"—model a wardrobe of 29 historically accurate costumes that reflect the impact of lingerie on modern couture. Side-by-side comparisons of outfits and the underpinnings that inspired them range from variations on a sixteenth-century "bodie" and "waspies" of the 1950s to the twenty-first-century trend of underwear as outerwear.